


Reparations

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-22
Updated: 2017-11-22
Packaged: 2019-02-05 07:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12789906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: A sequel to Grievances.





	Reparations

It isn’t possible, but she’d like a do-over of the last year.  Maybe of the last ten years.  Since she can’t have that, she’d at least like a second chance to right her wrongs before it’s too late.  She missed that chance with her mother, she would not like to miss that chance with him.

 

Working on cases has been a thinly veiled excuse for going out to the house.  She doesn’t know if Mulder can see through it, but she suspects that he might.  He doesn’t extend an invitation, she just shows up and he sits on the porch like he’s been waiting for her.  Each time she comes, there’s a little less clutter than there was before.

 

He cooks when she comes over.  Nothing elaborate, chicken dishes, mostly, or spaghetti.  She washes the dishes, each time hoping that he’ll try to interrupt.  If he did, she’d let him.  She imagines him lifting her hair off her shoulders and his breath on her neck.  She imagines running soapy fingers through his hair and leaving wet handprints on his shirt.  Instead, he stands beside her, drying while she washes and stacks plates and bowls in the cupboards.

 

She finds herself telling him unsolicited stories about their son.  Not just in quiet moments when they’re alone either, but in the office or out in the field, wherever they might be when something reminds her.  Like the time they were at the park and a caterpillar crawled onto his foot and the baby had sat riveted, his big blue eyes wide with fascination at the furry little creature inching its way over his toes.  He didn’t try to grab for it or kick his feet, he just watched, and she wondered how a six month old could possibly look so studious.

 

It is so hard for her to think about the eleven months she spent being a mother, but it gets easier the more she talks about it.  He listens, but he doesn’t ask questions.  Perhaps he’s afraid she’ll shut down if he prods, even a little.  She might, but she still wishes he’d ask.  There are still so many things she hasn’t told him and a lot that is still locked up tight.  She hasn’t told him that his son’s first word was ‘moon’ or that the Tickle-Me Elmo doll she got for him for Christmas made him cry.

 

Ask me, she thinks, when she tells him about the pureed peas in the hair incident or how the baby was in the 95th percentile for height at his 9 month check up.  Ask me how much he reminded me of you.  Ask me how I promised him every night that you’d be back soon.  Ask me how horrible it felt to have to tell you I gave him away.

 

Some nights, she falls asleep on the couch and she wakes up with the afghan draped over her and her shoes neatly lined by the door.  She’ll stay for coffee and a bagel and then reluctantly make her way back to her empty apartment.  It’s never felt like home to her, but even less so now.  

 

Experimentally, she’s crept into their bedroom in the middle of the night and stood in the doorway, watching him sleep.  He sleeps with his back turned to the door now.  She’s stepped deeper into the room to pick up one of his shirts off the floor and hold it to her face.  She’s knelt by the side of the bed and prayed for him to wake up and reach for her, but he hasn’t, and she’s gone back to the couch, leaving the shirt on the floor until she’s earned the right to wear it again.

 

More than a month of this goes by.  She starts to accept that maybe it’s enough to be back in his life and in the house and to share dinners and movies with him, but have that be all.  She comes out on a Saturday without pretense, bearing groceries and an overnight bag which she puts next to the couch.

 

Over the dinner that she makes, she finally tells him that she misses him.  He tells her he still squeezes the toothpaste from the middle of the tube in response and she laughs through the tears in her eyes.  

 

While she does the dishes that night, he slips his arms around her and rests his chin against her temple.  She shuts the water off and leaves the dirty dishes in the sink to take his hand and lead him upstairs to the bedroom.

 

Later, when he’s asleep, she gets out of bed and searches amongst the scattered clothes on the floor for his shirt.  She slips it over her head and holds the collar to her nose before she returns to bed and presses herself against his back, her arm draped over his chest.  

 

On Monday, as she gathers her things and prepares to leave, she watches through the window as he starts her car and scrapes the frost from the windshield.  

 

The End


End file.
